


A Perfectly Normal Monday Afternoon

by kereia



Category: The OC (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Burn Notice AU, F/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 01:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17715230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kereia/pseuds/kereia
Summary: Slamming the car door shut with more force than was strictly necessary, Ryan glared at Summer across the hood of his car."I promised to help you track down the people responsible for your burn notice, but this is not the way to do it."





	A Perfectly Normal Monday Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeffgoldblumvevo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgoldblumvevo/gifts).



Ryan heard the gunshots the second he pulled into the abandoned industrial complex. Gritting his teeth, he swallowed the cruses that were on the tip of his tongue and pushed his foot down on the accelerator. The car swerved as he careened around the corner of a warehouse, and his hands tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white.

He forced himself to ease up on the gas pedal until he got the car back under control, only to floor it immediately after when the open sliding doors came into view.

The tires screeched when he hit the breaks, but before he could so much as open the door, Summer came running out of the warehouse, jumping over two prone bodies on the ground as if she was a hurdle runner heading for the finish line.

There was no time to figure out if she was injured. Behind her, two men in identical black shirts and camouflage pants raced down the stairs from the elevated office space. The one in front paused briefly to take aim with his semiautomatic weapon.

His blood going cold, Ryan hit the button that lowered the rear window.

"Hurry up, Summer. Get in. Get in. Come on."

Bullets hit the pavement behind her heels as she put on a spurt. Ryan didn't bother lowering the front window. He picked up the gun that he'd thrown onto the passenger seat after Summer had called to tell him that she needed a ride home (her exact words and they were going to have A _C_ _onversation_ about that as soon as they were out of danger) and pulled the trigger as soon as Summer cleared his line of fire.

The sound of shattering glass was drowned out by the crack of bullets. The men on the stairs crouched down, making themselves as small as possible. A second later, the one in front jumped over the railing and took cover behind a forklift that was parked close by.

Adjusting his aim, Ryan laid down suppressive fire.

No more than a few seconds had passed, but it still felt like an eternity before Summer jumped headfirst through the rear window just as the quiet click of the firing pin signaled that his magazine was empty.

"Go, go go," Summer shouted even as she twisted around in the back seat. She raised her own gun and opened fire.

 

* * *

 

 

Slamming the car door shut with more force than was strictly necessary, Ryan glared at Summer across the hood of his car.

"I promised to help you track down the people responsible for your burn notice, but this is not the way to do it."

Settling her weight onto her heels, Summer crossed her arms, her own glare matching his in both stubbornness and intensity.

"Theo has been a CIA informant for over a decade, and he's in up to his neck with the Russian mob. He was my contact in Omsk, and I saw him hours before I got burned. It's not a coincidence that he showed up in Newport weeks after the CIA dumped me here. He knows something about why that mission went south. I know he does."

"Whatever he knows, it doesn't look as if he wants to share. And this conversation is not about him, it's about you going off on your own without backup to talk to the Russian mob. _The Russian mob_ , Summer." The longer he thought about it, the more he wanted to punch something. "How did you think that was going to go? You're lucky you're still alive."

He could see by the way she lifted her chin that he was in for a fight. "I didn't have any reason to believe that _this_ meeting would be any different than the other ones I had with them in the past five years."

"It was reckless," he shot back. He could still hear the echoing crack of the semiautomatics, could smell the cordite that lingered in the car, and the feel adrenalin rushing through him, making his hands tremble.

He balled them into fists until the edges of his car keys dug painfully into his palm.

"It's my _job_ , Ryan." The anger simmering in her eyes belied the cool tone of her voice, though it still had a sobering effect on him.

As much as he hated to admit it, she was right.

Summer had been a CIA agent for the better part of a decade. In theory, he knew that it wasn't a job that could be called safe or easy by any stretch of the imagination. In theory, he knew that she'd probably lost count of how many times she'd put her own life in danger. In theory, he knew that she had killed people in the line of duty.

The problem was that, in practice, Ryan still remembered her as the tipsy teenage girl in her bikini top and denim cut-offs who'd come on to him at a beach house party during his first week with the Cohens.

It was his own damn fault, really. They were both in their early thirties now, and he wasn't helping anyone, least of all himself, by indulging his nostalgia for a time in which – for all its drama – hails of bullets had not been a common feature.

Grinding his teeth, he jerked his head towards the building behind which they were parked. He'd purchased the bar on the boardwalk three years ago and taken up residence in the small apartment upstairs. He could hear the muffled murmurs of conversation from inside as they walked up the back stairs in silence. The screeching of the seagulls that circled overhead mingled with the constant rumbling of the ocean waves rolling onto the shore.

His brain had the annoying habit of dwelling on all the ways this could have ended badly. As the adrenalin rush faded, the tapestry of sound helped root him back in reality. It was familiar, calming... almost soothing enough to chase away the images of Summer running towards his car, of a bullet hitting her in the back, of her falling to the ground while he was pinned down and unable to get to her.

 _She's a grown woman_ , he reminded himself sternly. _And a highly trained agent on top of that. She can take care of herself._

And she'd called him for help, when she'd realized that she needed him, hadn't she? And even then, she'd already been on her way out of the warehouse. If he hadn't shown up, chances were she still would have gotten away. Summer had always been resourceful.

He made a frustrated noise and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you," he admitted while he fumbled with the keys.

Why the hell were his hands still shaking?

Unceremoniously, Summer snatched the keys out of his hand and opened the door for him. "Thank you for giving me a ride back home," she replied quietly. Her expression was serious, but he thought that her eyes looked softer than they had a moment ago.

Hovering on the threshold, his gaze roamed across her face. She was alive. She was okay. Today was just a normal day. _A typical Monday_ , he thought with no small amount of irony.

Then his gaze snagged on the red stain soaking into the tattered yellow fabric on her shoulder.

"You're bleeding," he exclaimed while he reached for her arm.

Summer shrugged. "It's just a graze. Doesn't even hurt."

Ryan barely managed to swallow an exasperated huff. "At least come in and let me patch that up."

Summer regarded him for a long moment, her eyes boring into him as if she was searching his face for the answer to a question she hadn't asked, yet.

"Alright."

 

* * *

 

 

Summer watched him carefully as he cleaned and bandaged her wound.

As it turned out, the bullet had, in fact, only grazed her shoulder, and the laceration had mostly stopped bleeding by the time Ryan dabbed an antiseptic wipe across it.

They were sitting underneath the ceiling fan in the open plan kitchenette, Summer perching on one of the mismatched chairs he'd picked up at a yard sale, while he'd pulled up a somewhat rickety wicker chair from the living room. It groaned alarmingly beneath his weight whenever he moved, but Ryan hardly paid any attention to it.

His attention was studiously focused on the wound he was tending, and he was determined to let neither the prospect of collapsing furniture nor the fact that Summer had taken her shirt off, distract him.

"You really don't like it when I get hurt, don't you?" Summer asked quietly as he cut off a large strip from the band-aid roll and carefully covered her wound with it.

The question caught him off-guard. "Why does that surprise you, exactly?"

Summer looked a little wistful even as she avoided his gaze in favor of staring at the endless blue sky outside his front windows. "What I mean is that you've always had a bit of a protective streak, but ever since you found out what I do – what I _did_ – for a living, it's become a lot more... let's say 'pronounced.'"

Ducking his head, he looked up at her with a rueful smile. "Instead of 'overbearing?'"

"If it were actually that bad, I wouldn't be sitting here."

Ryan considered his answer for a moment. "I care about you," he finally admitted, forcing the words around the sudden obstruction in his throat. "And I worry about you. So when the urge to roll you up in bubble wrap gets too strong, I remind myself that you can handle yourself, and then I take my anxiety out on a punching bag because I know that trying to keep you save is only going to result in you walking away, but... Yeah... Every now and then, especially after helping you escape a firefight with the _Russian mob_ ," he leaned in, his eyebrows rising as he held her gaze, "it's kind of hard to keep that all locked down."

Holding his gaze, Summer placed her palm against his face. Her thumb brushed against his cheekbone, and he felt a sharp tug low in his abdomen at the warmth he saw in her eyes.

"I feel adrift," Summer said pensively, "the way I used to when I was a teenager. Before I ended up here, my life had a purpose, and I didn't really know how much I needed that until I woke up in a dingy motel room six months ago. You kept me grounded in the past half year. You're the only person in Newport who knows both who I was and who I am now, and the fact that you always have my back means a lot to me." She inhaled shakily. "It means _so much_ , Ryan. I think I can forgive a bit of over-protectiveness in exchange for that."

"I won't let it get out of hand then," he said, only half joking. "It gets easier once the adrenalin has worn off."

Summer smiled, and he wondered whether or not it would make their relationship too complicated if he followed his instincts and kissed her the way he'd wanted to for longer than he could remember. But Summer's hand lingered against his face, and... Well, there were limits to his self-restraint.

So he closed the distance between them and gently slanted his mouth across hers.

A tiny laugh bubbled up in Summer's throat, and from one second to the next he found himself with a lap full of curvy, lethal, super spy, who wrapped her arms around his neck and brushed her tongue eagerly along his bottom lip.

Flattening his palms against the warm skin of her lower back, he opened his mouth to her and pulled her closer.

"Is this also because of the adrenalin?" she asked, her breath whispering across his lips.

Ryan brushed the tip of her nose with his own. "No. This is just me."

Summer's smile was radiant. "Good."

She leaned in to kiss him again.

 


End file.
